Pity the Australian banker.
Since September 2025, the big four banks have sacked – or are planning to sack – about 6000 of them.
More than 10,000 Australian banking jobs have disappeared in the past two years, the Financial Services Union estimates, many offshored or replaced by artificial intelligence.
Among them were 3500 ANZ employees shown the door in the year to September, the bank reported on Monday, at the same time it posted statutory net profit up 23 per cent to $7.27 billion.
Why that’s happening is expected to occupy much of a two-day parliamentary grilling of all the big four’s bosses, beginning on Thursday.
Westpac, which will appear after ANZ during the first day of hearings, flagged in October it would strike 250 employees from its payrolls.
The same month, NAB announced it would shed 1500 workers before Christmas, then delayed the layoffs to late January.
Commonwealth Bank, whose statutory net profit nearly tipped $11 billion in the 12 months to September, is expected to have jettisoned 1000 jobs by the end of 2026.
“They’re cutting Australian jobs and getting that work done offshore and this is at a time where they’re announcing very healthy profits,” banking committee chair Ed Husic told ABC TV on Wednesday.
“The behaviour of big business – in particular in the way that it uses AI and the impacts on jobs – is really serious.”
A week earlier, Mr Husic had slammed NAB for gutting its tech, risk and compliance divisions as part of the shedding announced in October, calling it “frankly disturbing” in a social media post.
The Labor MP warned executives they may be more vulnerable to the consequences of shoddy AI-related decision-making than they might think.
“I will be very interested to see whether or not director insurance will cover the decisions of boards if they do things in the way that they use and onboard AI, and they didn’t think through the consequences,” Mr Husic said.
“It’s happening in the (United States), and I reckon watch this space in Australia.”
How the big four treat low-income customers might also be high on the committee’s agenda, after the consumer watchdog in July ordered CBA to herd about 1.5 million customers onto low- or no-fee accounts.
It followed a $93 million refund the bank had forked out in December 2025 after being found to have siphoned excessive fees from cash-strapped clients.
Issues such as the impact of a controversial new ban on credit card surcharges, protecting customers from scams, and banks passing on high interest rates to borrowers will also likely emerge during Thursday and Friday’s hearings.
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